Ahh, the old times of flying.

When I flew from Zurich to Vienna with my sister she knew the purser of the flight.

While she was immediately seated in business class I was asked if I would mind to enjoy the entire flight in the cockpit on a jump seat

(yeah, I know: stupid question :) )

Even though I was in my late 20s it was a kid's dream come true.

Needless to say that this was before 9/11 and that this would be completely impossible nowadays.

Which is a shame.

I remember getting to sit in the flight engineer's seat while he took a break. My grandfather had been a Pan Am pilot, so this was heaven for me. Nowadays they don't have flight engineers, jump seats etc. All squashed up like a bus, and we wonder why they treat us like cattle.

What surprised me most - in addition to the fact that flying a plane is definitely not quite like driving a glorified bus - was the old timey manuals that actually hoged a lot of valuable cockpit real estate.

Imagine about seven quite massive ring binders on the floor on the right side of the first officer.

Today they probably have that all on an iPad. I could imagine, though and given how conservative the aviation industry is, that they still have to lug around the entire amount of paper.

That, however and admittedly, is just a guess.

iPads are actually being adopted in aviation precisely to get rid of all the crufty old manuals and maps.

I flew to a conference in Vegas last month on a 737 (via Southwest). Chatted a bit with the pilots and was reminded how cramped the cockpit is these days. Even with multi-function displays, there were a billion levers/buttons/knobs. How they ever were allowed to have a hyper-curious kid in the cockpit back in the day is unthinkable.